Kaiba's Sunday Afternoon
by Trillian75
Summary: Years after the Ceremonial Battle, Seto Kaiba finds himself with a rare opportunity to reflect on the past, including his fascination with his old rival, Yami Yugi.


It's not often I find myself with a Sunday afternoon with nothing to do. It feels strange.

My brother Mokuba is spending the afternoon on a date with his girlfriend. I haven't even met this one yet. He doesn't usually bring them around to meet me. He's told me that I tend to intimidate them. Ha! He tends to pick such vapid young things. I expect that this one's no different.

I've never been big on "dating". I'd say it was a necessary evil...but I don't even believe in the "necessary" part. It's a game I choose not to play.

I remember the time Mokuba tried to set me up on a date. It was with that girl from high school, Yugi Mutou's friend, Anzu Mazaki. What a disaster! She spent the whole evening saying, "Do you remember?" in that whiny voice of hers, bringing up a whole host of events from high school that I cared nothing about...not back then, and certainly not in the present day. "Do you remember the carnival games booth our class made for the school festival in 10th grade?" Why the hell would I waste brain cells remembering that?

I suppose this offended her that I don't consider those events important. There are a whole lot of things that others consider so important that really don't matter at all. TV shows. Celebrity gossip. Professional sports. Mundane events of the past. I can't even feign an interest in such things.

No new emails. Crap. Has the whole world taken this blasted day off?

What do I remember about high school? Yugi Mutou. Not the Yugi Mutou who was a small, meek, bullied student, but the Yugi Mutou who came out during our card games as a strong, competitive duelist who was cocky and confident as hell. His friends called this Yugi "Yami", and insisted that he was not a facet of Yugi's split personality-that, instead, he was actually the spirit of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who had become trapped in the Millennium Puzzle that Yugi wore on a chain around his neck.

It's an unbelievable story. Nevertheless, there was a vast difference between the two Yugis. Regular Yugi merely annoyed me. Yami, on the other hand, infuriated me, challenged me, fascinated me. The moment that he first managed to defeat my three Blue Eyes White Dragons by successfully summoning and attacking with Exodia the Forbidden One...something snapped in my brain, and I have never been the same since.

Yami. Five feet tall (five-six with the hair) with eyes of violet flecked with crimson, he was a more imposing figure than his small stature would suggest. He wore Yugi's royal blue school uniform, he had Yugi's crazy tri-colored hair with the long blond bangs in front and magenta-tipped black spikes in the back, and he wore the same bondage collar and gaudy jewelry that Yugi wore, but he was not Yugi. I get that now. I don't think I fully understood that then. It was just too ridiculous of a story.

My desire to duel Yami, to defeat him unconditionally, that was once my true goal in life. I needed to know what drove him, what made him tick, how he determined his strategy. He was aloof, smart, and logical with a strange, fascinating undercurrent of emotion. So like myself and yet so different. I wished that I could open him up and take him apart the way I took apart the orphanage's VCR when I was a child to see the wondrous parts that made the magic work inside. (Ah, I was scrubbing toilets for weeks for that stunt, even though I was able to put it all back together in perfect working order. Better than before, actually-it stopped making that strange ticking noise during playback. But no one cared about that besides myself, apparently.)

As long as I am indulging myself in flights of fantasy on this interminable afternoon, yes, it would be nice to be able to call Yami up to chat on the phone, or perhaps invite him over to the mansion. I can just see him now, sitting in that Queen Anne armchair, one leg crossed over the other in that strangely feminine manner he had, slouched over to one side casually, slight smirk on his face.

Well, whether or not he was actually the spirit of a pharaoh, all I know is that at the final duel in Egypt, I could see both aspects of Yugi at once for the first and only time. After Yugi defeated Yami, the tomb opened and Yami strode inside, school jacket fluttering behind him like a cape, giving a thumbs-up like the cocky bastard he was, and then he disappeared forever. The tomb was sealed and came crumbling to the ground. We barely escaped with our lives.

Yugi Mutou is still a talented duelist. However, I have no desire to face him ever again. The spirit that once so enraptured me is gone forever. Yugi did what I could not do, and I will never forgive him.


End file.
